I am looking to go laptop-less in live performances and trying to find a relatively cheap piece of hardware gear than can reliably play back tracks but also allows the ability to improvise on top (and build new songs).
The M:S is seeming like a good option. However, I just wanted to clarify: could you theoretically load a whole instrumental onto the machine and play it back in full (or at least in sayy 16-bar sections / chunks)? In this scenario, (if tempo-synced) could you also add new elements on top of it?
Given the max sample length seems to be 11 minutes (from what I can find), this seems theoretically possible but I’m struggling to find evidence of anyone actually doing it. Do you guys have any indication as to whether this can be done with the M:S?
Of course you can, but note that the max. sample time of 11 minutes is for all samples in a project combined (all needs to fit in the 64MB RAM). Another restriction is that the M:S can only play mono samples. So when you want to use a stereo sample you’ll need to split it into its left and right channel before uploading and use two panned tracks.
And “yes”, the rest of the tracks can play on top of it.
But I’m not sure if this is really a good idea (depending on your needs, of course). This way each song would probably occupy a complete project. So you’ll need to load a different project after each song …
Not at all ideal. Look elsewhere.
Octatrack for Elektrons, perhaps newer MPCs, otherwise.
AKAI force can now stream from SSD drive.
Perhaps Roland Sp-404mk2 (has 16GB ram), if you can find one/wait.
Well, it’s not difficult, but depending on how much projects there are and due to the very tiny screen it takes a couple of seconds to find the right one and then there is the loading time (another couple of seconds - up to 30s maybe?).